[deleted] wrote at January 23, 2018 at 10:30 PM

Human slavery is something that existed for thousands of years, and still exists to this day. There are more slaves alive today than at any point in history (more than all the slaves during the plantation days put together).

It's very easy to blame the white european imperialists for the slave trade, to blame the white europeans for it's creation. The akward truth is, that the culture of slavery already existed in Africa when the Europeans showed up. The practice was actually fairly common in the region. If two tribes / villages went to war, it was common practice for the victor to take posession of the losers land, animals, property, and people (as slaves). There were not mobs of white europeans riding around africa, rounding up the locals. Every slave sold to the european imperialists was sold to them by an African. Many had already been slaves for some time in Aftrica, before they were sold and put on the boats.

What the europeans did do, was increase the value of slaves, which, once existing local 'stock' were sold off, did lead to an increase in inter tribal / village warfare as there was now more to be gained from defeating your enemy. The spoils that before would have been in the form of some extra laborours / concubines, could now be sold to the europeans and used to purchase weapons or other items.

The Europeans, Americans, as well as the African slavers of course profited from this.

The UK was the first country to get rid of slavery. Unfortunately, on a legal basis it was not as simple as just passing a law to make it illigal. Slaves, being classed at the time as property, gave their owners certain rights, and it would have set a dangerous president of 'property seizure' by the government that was deemed unexceptable.

The sollution found was to use 'eminent domain' rights already existing in law. But this limited the government to 'compulsary purchase orders'. Feeling that slavery was unchristian and having already decided that the chattling of slaves on ships went against the Magna Carta, the decision was made, and the government 'bought' every slave within the realms controlled by the UK.

It's worth noting, that this cost the government a lot of money. The amount of money spent on freeing the slaves came to just over 60% of the nations GDP. To this day it is still the largerst single ticket expense any goverment has made in the world ever, by orders of magnitude.

While this did not put a stop to the British impirialist actions, and they went on, via 'state sponsored' mercentile companies to exploit much of the world to great national profit at the expense of other. Slavery itself as a whole, ended up as a net loss to the British. (though of course certain individuals did do very well from the whole sordid affair)

It was an unregulated group of people that developed the slave trade. It was a regulated government that ended it.